Witcher Kings 0.8.1 news

Hi folks,

Though Witcher Kings 0.8.0 was quite stable (no random CTDs), there were a few nasty game-breaking bugs (witchers and sorcerers getting pruned, random education traits, bedridden immortals with Reaper's Due) and lack of Conclave support. This is the reason for patch 0.8.1, which is a save-compatible bugfix and balancing minor update.

For more information on the mod, checkout the Witcher Kings wiki page.

In parallel we've started working on our next major update, called the "W3 update", so stay tune for more in the coming weeks ! ;)

Let's Play series

Before describing changes, I'd like to start by thanking AlpaxLP for his great Let's play King Foltest of Temeria series on Witcher Kings 0.8.0 !

His video series helped to find some bugs, balance and usability issues. It's very instructive to see someone else playing ! :)

Conclave education

Conclave DLC is now officially supported !

The mod has 4 generalist education traits that give bonus to all 5 attributes, but with smaller values than the specialized trait at the same tier.
In order to have these education traits as a possible outcome with Conclave education focus, a new "polymath" education focus has been added, and the UI tweaked to display the 6th focus:

The first tier trait, "uneducated buffoon" trait is now a probable outcome of not having an education focus (or utterly failing when having the polymath focus !).

The mod also adds 4 personality traits: tolerant, racist, gambler and reasonable.
These traits are now integrated with Conclave childhood focus:

• Affectionate can lead to tolerant
• Haughty can lead to racist
• Playful can lead to gambler
• Conscientious can lead to reasonable

In addition the adolescence age has been decreased from 12 to 11 and childhood age from 6 to 5, to preserve Conclave education balance (attribute gain, events MTTH, ...), as adulthood age is 15.

Dynamic flags for Nilfgaardian kingdom vassals

This idea was inspired by the e_iron_throne title's flag in the AGOT mod, which changes based on the ruling dynasty.
Kingdoms have a different flag when vassals of Nilfgaard (the Nilfgaard sun, typically added above or next to the kingdom's original flag), but revert back to their default, "de jure" flag while independent:

Witchers and sorcerers pruning

Due to a vanilla engine behavior, characters present at a court that experiences an inheritance of title have a chance of dying of "natural death", bypassing the normal rules of pruning (aka "disappearing without trace"). With the workaround, immortal (landless) characters are now really immortal !
But what about long-lived races ? Though they have an immortal trait, as they are also randomly generated by the game, they also need to be pruned, otherwise courts would bloat and game performances would slow down !
Now that this issue is fixed, the number of child with hidden magic talent had to be toned down a bit. For witchers there's a spawning event if there's 5 or below, because they may die out fighting monsters occasionally.
I've run several observer games (100 years in-game) to check and tweak the pruning/generation.

Wrong checksum warning

The Windows automatic installer has helped reduced drastically support and false-positive bug reports due to bad mod installations.
However it was still happening from time to time from players with manual install, or when CK2 updates and the mod is not compatible with that version yet.

So there's now a startup event (on new game start and when loading a save), that will warn you if you don't have the expected checksum(s), with some clues on what to do in such case:

In case you're using a compatible mod that modifies the checksum, you can disable this warning via the game rules.

Helping with the mod

The potential of the mod is huge, and the team is very small, while there's still a lot of ideas to be implemented !

You can help by:

• reporting bugs
• giving suggestions, ideas and feedback (balance, fun, ...)
• doing some modding (research, graphics, scripting, ...). If you're interested browse the opened issues on the Github repository and contact me.

Known bugs

• Only human sorcerers are generated
• AoK narrative events don't fire after resigning (need to restart the game)
• Filavandrel gets a child portrait

Full changelog

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v0.8.1 2017-08-20
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Compatibility with vanilla 2.7.2/2.7.1

This release is save-compatible with previous v0.8.0, and some issues will repair themselves upon loading:
- Reaper's Due diseases effects on immortals will be removed
- Dwarven walls and Dwarven keeps will be converted to their vanilla equivalent
- Conclave Noble and Clergy levy and tax laws will be set to default

Features:
- Support Conclave education focus:
- Add a polymath education focus and tweak the UI to add a 6th icon.
- Make uneducated buffoon a probable outcome of not having an education focus
- Add missing learning bonuses to polymath education traits.
- Handle extra personality traits: affectionate can lead to tolerant, haughty to racist, playful to gambler and conscientious to reasonable
- Decrease adolescence age to 11 and childhood age to 5, to preserve Conclave education balance when adulthood age is 15.
- Use dynamic flags for Nilgaardian kingdom vassals
- Use better flags for k_pontar and k_emblonia
- Add various canon character traits
- Improve usability of game rules:
- Highlight mod specific rules with color
- Create a group for Witcher Kings specific rules
- Remove achievement warnings, as mods already disable achievements
- Add a warning on game start if the checksum is not the expected one, can be disabled via a game rule.
- Use a more visible icon for wiki links
- Add a sound when rolling dice during dice poker
- Add a picture for Witcher 2 bookmark on era screen
- Add missing character backgrounds on Witcher 2 bookmark
- Improve "Unite the North" description, since tooltip is lacking count = 3
- Enable playing dice poker with prisoners regardless of opinion
- Re-enable the imperial authority evolution event on Nilfgaard Empire succession.
- Add back Maximum crown obligations level (w/o Conclave DLC)
- Add seafarer flag to Verdenian, Skellige, Cidarian and Cintran cultures
- Add some more loading tips

Bugfix:
- Remove the mod non-Conclave education system, as it's buggy/unbalanced.
- Fix laws when Conclave DLC is active:
- Disable Crown Levies law
- Fix Iqta levy and tax obligations appearing instead of Noble and Clergy laws
- Fix tanistry succession being impossible to enact
- Workaround immortal courtiers (including witchers and sorcerers) dying from 'natural death' when a title is inherited and the court gets pruned.
- Fix witcher spawning safety event to check more frequently, and work even if witchers no longer exist
- Make long lived races immune to Reaper's Due disease symptoms, to prevent bedridden epidemic.
- Fix court mage magic spell decisions being often greyed out and improve AI target filtering
- Make healing spell remove any Reaper's Due disease symptom flags
- Reduce the probability of witchers getting killed by monsters from 1/20 to 1/1000
- Allow Elven sorcerers to gain the fertile_nonhuman trait
- Prevent from playing Dice Poker against oneself, which is non-functional.
- Remove default character_event sound, which gets annoying with instant event chains (dice poker, ...).
- Fix human sorcerers defaulting to elfgfx ethnicity.
- Optimize some MTTH events that can be done on_startup instead.
- Fix missing portraits for elf son/daughter
- Workaround engine bug on lowborns from character history getting a random dynasty
- Prevent trained mages to get married when using "Marry all courtiers" decision
- Clarify Pogrom CB description.
- Fix Nilfgaard successful invasion event option to actually grant the new kingdom title.
- Allow special force commander to fight Scoiatel even if at war or leading troops.
- Tune done revolt risk from scoiatel presence, and remove scoiatel presence in neighbor provinces when crushing a revolt.
- Change cost of fetching a Witcher to be fixed instead of scaled, but each monster cleaning now costs money upon success.
- Remove Dwarven walls/keep buildings as they break vanilla building chains
- Remove unsuitable RIP physician character events.
- Add missing high gods in religion definitions
- Prevent from using "Expand by conquest" CB indefinitely
- Fix prison visiting event to not impregnate infertile characters
- Fix reclamation wars allowed when not independent
- Workaround bug causing Saskia to become vassal of Kaedwen when winning or if war invalidates.